Dramatic Problems

In his masterclass on Sundance Co//ab, David Schwab stresses on the need of a dramatic problem in writing. He says it's the most important thing for a character to have a problem that makes you and the viewer worry for them and their wellbeing. You must get a sense that if the character doesn't solve this problem soon, they will suffer.

It's problematic to write a script without identifying the character or characters' Dramatic Problems, because everything that happens should be influenced by it.

The starting point of a script is the character's Dramatic Problem, and the ending point is whether the problem has been changed or not.

The Dramatic Problem can usually be summarised in a line or two. They are mostly pretty simple - like WALL-E's loneliness, or John's fear of heights in Vertigo; and sometimes not that apparent (at least to me), like the DP in Where Is The Friend's Home. I would have identified it as a kid can't find his friend's house, but Schwab identifies it as a world which doesn't listen to children, that doesn't have empathy for them - which he says is demonstrated in the opening scene.

Schwab suggests an exercise, which I thought was pretty helpful in learning more about DPs. Take AFI's or BFI's list of top 100 films, and try to identify the DP of each film. I skipped the ones I hadn't watched, and tried it out with a list of films I watched in the past year.

I wondered if this was something only applicable to the conventional Hollywood screenplay with a neatly demarcated three act structure, but as I did the exercise I realised that it largely is true for all kinds of films, even documentaries. Some were a bit hard to pin down, for example, a film like No Home Movie or Tropical Malady. But it's an interesting exercise all the same.

Sundance Co//ab has hours of very insightful and amazing videos with professionals from the industry, covering various aspects and kinds of filmmaking. It's an amazing free resource (can't believe it's free! Ah, the beauty of the internet!) which I discovered this year and am very grateful for.